


Pale Science

by mtjester



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:59:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3871249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtjester/pseuds/mtjester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What now?  You try to think about the romance novels you read.  He’s tense, you’re tense, and you’re both trying to be moirails on a pile you know to be absolute garbage.  But pale romance, this is what it’s made for, right?  Tense situations.  You got this.  This is…this is perfect, right?  You take a deep breath and reach over to him, brushing your hand tentatively through his hair.  And of course, instead of calming down, you’re both more tense.  Way more tense.  Bells and sirens and “Danger, Will Robinson!” levels of tense.  But he moves a little closer.  Just a scoot.  And you do, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt calling for davekat sent to me on tumblr. Also continuing from [this comic](http://gloomy-optimist.tumblr.com/post/117226630136/now-red-davekat-is-good-but-mtjester-and-i-were) done by [gloomy-optimist](http://gloomy-optimist.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

Your pile is a sorry piece of shit. Of all the piles of personally significant inanimate objects crammed into a mound for romantic platonic non-sexual lovemaking, your pile is probably the worst ever. Paradox space has never seen a pile as pitiful as yours, and you can almost feel the horrorterrors laughing. What a fucking joke.

You look down at the book and up at your pile. The picture you’re working from isn’t much different than your own handiwork. You can’t figure out what’s off. Is it the smuppets? Should you have chosen something a little less phallic, maybe? But you like the irony of cuddling up pale-style on the soft, obscene plushies, especially since Karkat is none the wiser. But…you have to admit, maybe it does ruin the mood. Maybe you should eschew irony for this. But then, what the hell else are you supposed to build a pile out of? Dead things floating in jars? You can just imagine how uncomfortable that would be, with all the hard glass and loud clinking. And if one of the jars break, the mood would be as dead as the sopping specimen you’d both be rolling in. You wouldn’t even have to take the mood’s pulse to verify its death. It’d be a horrible, messy scene, the kind that makes even hardened cops in crime dramas look away and grimace. No recovering from that.

You huff a sigh through your nose and drop the book unceremoniously to the ground. Hovering around and staring like an idiot isn’t going to help you solve this problem. You have to dive in and live the experience. Feel the pile. Be the pile. You trudge over and drop to your knees on the bed of plush rumps, rolling artlessly onto your back. You are engulfed in the forgiving embrace of a hundred foam asses, all yielding to your weight like a patchwork of memory foam pillows with impudent rear ends. For a moment, you relax and get a feeling for your bro love nest. Just lay and wait. You still can’t quite figure out what’s wrong, but damn are you comfortable. You may have to take a break on the pale science, because you don’t think you’ll be able to claw your way out of the bowels of your smuppet cave. You may have to just stay here forever. Or for a short nap.

An all-too-familiar voice cuts through the incoming nap haze in your brain. “What the fuck are you doing?” You freeze, very much alert again. Shit. Your pile’s not ready. And with you in it like this, being all relaxed and chill…this must be some pornographic fantasy material right here. Like a crush walking in on their dreamboat beating his meat. Right? This must be the pale equivalent of Karkat strutting in on your special me-time. With that thought in mind, you stretch out and adopt a more inviting pose.

“You like my pile?” you ask, propping your head up seductively. Pale seductively. You hope. You studied this shit, right? You got this.

Karkat’s got that look on his face. That look he’s been giving you since the day you ironically initiated this fumbling courtship. It’s somewhere between disgruntled and perplexed with maybe a hint of disgust. Except this time, you can see the faintest pink blush color his cheeks just below his eyes. That’s good, right?

“This is what you’ve been doing all day?” he asks, and you notice how short the sentence is. No running metaphors or elaborate insults. It’s as close as Karkat ever gets to being at a loss for words, because he always has at least some squirreled away in reserve. The guy is never not speaking if he can help it. Kinda like you. Two peas in a pod, two knights in a wordy sea of meaningless rambling monologues.

“Sure is. And I bet you’re hankering to get in on all this soft plush action. Don’t even try to hide it, bro. You wanna dive into my throne of asses.”

You push some smuppets away from you to make a groove big enough for his body and pat the space, allowing the smallest of smirks to grace your lips. The blush on Karkat’s face deepens. He really is speechless now, and you see his eyes dart to the door. After a brief internal battle that you’d really love to hear, he turns to the door, shuts it, and shuffles over to you. He hesitates, and you let him take his time. You’re at a delicate junction right now. Pile cuddles are a Big Deal. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’d admit that you really have no idea what he’s feeling, what with whatever weird troll hormones are involved in this sort of thing. If you were even more honest with yourself, you’d also admit that you wish you did.

The way Karkat fits himself next to you feels too much like he’s preparing to lose some sort of virginity to you, like a shy teen settling in next to a lover before the full run to home base. The thought brings heat to your face but, thankfully, none to your groin. Maybe the smuppets really were a bad idea. But the energy is wrong for that sort of thing, you notice. Even though your first instinct is to code all this tense anticipation according to human romance, you’ve read enough by now to know better. Maybe your constant research has rewired something in you. Maybe you’ve immersed yourself well enough by now to really start getting it. Maybe you really can do this moirail thing right.

“So…” you say, turning onto your side, “got any feelings you wanna lay on me? I’m all about listening to you right now. Mad levels of supportive. Anything you got, I can be about making it feel less, uh…emotionally aggravating, or something.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” he says in a tone of voice that adds, “and who’s surprised?”

“No, man, I’m totally…I know exactly what’s up,” you say, and you keep your consternation off your face. You knew it. Your pile sucks. The energy starts to trickle away.

“The only feelings I want to talk about right now are my feelings about how you spent literally fucking hours holed away in your respiteblock piling these disturbing stuffed men into a small mountain when we could have been doing something actually productive,” he says.

You raise an eyebrow. “Nothing we do on this meteor is anything close to productive, ever.”

“Probably because you’re wasting time doing asinine things like this!” He gestures widely to your pile. That confirms it. Your pile really is a heap of bullshit.

“Hey, I made an effort,” you say. He scowls.

“I know you think this is a huge joke for your human entertainment, but–”

“Whoa, no, this is one hundred percent Strider sincerity here. …Well, eighty percent at least.”

He makes a noise of irritation and moves to get up. Your mind scrambles and your stomach drops, and before you can think, you reach up and brush your hand against his cheek. He freezes. “C’mon, dude,” you say. He looks over at you, surprise evident in his eyes. “Look, it was only the smuppets I was being ironic about. That’s the twenty percent. Everything else, this is…serious.”

He stares down at you. Your face stays blank, a defense against uncertainty when emotion would be far more valuable. You’re too tense to melt away your poker face, so instead, you carefully remove your shades so that he can see your eyes. The eye contact the two of you are sharing makes you feel vulnerable, and you wonder if he can see that. He lowers himself back into the pile.

What now? You try to think about the romance novels you read. He’s tense, you’re tense, and you’re both trying to moirails on a pile you know to be absolute garbage. But pale romance, this is what it’s made for, right? Tense situations. You got this. This is…this is perfect, right? You take a deep breath and reach over to him, brushing your hand tentatively through his hair. And of course, instead of calming down, you’re both more tense. Way more tense. Bells and sirens and “Danger, Will Robinson!” levels of tense. But he moves a little closer. Just a scoot. And you do, too.

Your hand is still in his hair, and you stroke through the wiry locks, noting vaguely how thick they feel. You pull your other hand from under your head and run your fingers against his face. You have no idea what you’re doing, but something changes in his pupils, so subtly that you’re sure you imagined it. You twitch when you feel his fingers brush against your stomach, moving up until his palm is rest harmlessly on your side. His knees press up against yours. You intertwine.

“Talk to me,” he says, more quietly than you’ve ever heard him speak. Oh, fuck, right. The shooshing. Vocals are important. But yours are tight.

You lick your lips, and your voice comes out thin. “So, uh…” Shit. Shit. What do you even say? “Getting pretty mad pale up in here, amirite?”

He rolls his eyes so hard you’re sure you’ve just destroyed the mood–fucking murdered it like the Freddy fucking Krueger of pale romance–but he moves himself closer–really close–and tucks his head under your chin. With his chest pressed against yours, you can feel the vibrations that come from his throat, a mellow purr, deep and soothing. Your adam’s apple bobs against his forehead. He pulls himself higher, resting his forehead against your nose, and his arms wrap around you. When did you become the one who needed to be soothed? Or is that how it works? Does it have to be one person calming the other? Hell, with the two of you, either one of you could use a little coddling at any point of time. You decide to go with the flow and relax with a small sigh, draping your own arm over him. You don’t know what the hell he’s doing with his voice box, but you can hum. You’re good at that. So you do, a soft, noncommittal noise, and you trace shapes against his back.

Slowly, the nap haze from before returns to you. You feel it sneak up behind your eyes, and the colors around you blur. Karkat is a heavy, organic lump of troll in your arms. You realize dimly that he’s already asleep. Satisfied, you press your lips against his nose and let yourself drift to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose doesn’t get moirallegience like you do. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t. You’ve basically graduated from her academic-style tutelage on all things pale, even though she knows how to hit the books better than you do. You’re beyond study sessions and broad comparative psychological theories. This ain’t some fucked up, ethically dubious ethnographic study in xeno-anthropology. You are living the dream. You are Karkat’s moirail, and you’re not even a drop ironic about it anymore. Mostly.

“So I take it you wouldn’t mind if I recovered all of my books from your room, then?” Rose asks, a tiny little shit-eating curl at the corner of her lips. And people think you’re the one who doesn’t take shit seriously.

“Go ahead,” you say. “I got this. I’m entrenched in this bitch. I have platonic bro-dating down to a science, like the Frankenstein of obscure xeno-romance.”

“Mm hmm,” she says. “It’s strange to see a man of science eschewing his research. One would think a scientist would become more dedicated to records and theories as his experiment progresses. That is, after all, what science is about.”

You huff. “Okay, you know that wasn’t meant to be literal. I’m not literally conducting some sort of fucked up experiment with Karkat’s fragile emotions.”

“I know,” Rose says. “Although I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“I read everything there is to read like at least twice. Once. At least once. Mostly. The point is, none of the book stuff is going to get me any farther than I’ve already gotten.”

“Which is…?”

“Hey now. I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Ah, of course.”

Rose knows how to use silence against you. It drives you crazy. The seconds tick by, and you cave. “We’ve done the shooshing and the papping and all the really intimate stuff, if you really need to know all the saucy details of our personal business,” you say.

“And?”

“And what?”

“How have your feeling exchanges been progressing?”

“Our…okay, look, we’ve been taking it slow on that front, since, let’s be honest, neither of us have our shit together enough to just dive in. We have like an ocean of shit between us. We practically need scuba gear to get to the bottom of it.”

Rose cocks an eyebrow at you. “I hadn’t realized it was so bad.”

“Oh, bullshit, you know. I’ll bet all my boonbucks that you have an entire stash of journals detailing your psychological analysis of our collective pathologies.”

She smirks in a way that says, ‘And you’ll never see a word of it.’ Instead, she redirects the conversation. “You may find it prudent to take a step back and avoid overestimating your competence until you’ve had to deal with an actual episode.”

“Episode? You mean like one of Karkat’s shitfits?”

“No, I’m actually of the opinion that those ‘shitfits’ are beneficial to him as a form of sincere self-expression. What I mean to say is that the ocean of shit you claim to share with him may surface some deep anxiety that proves more damaging to his ego, and you should be prepared to help him work through it.”

You frown. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s not like you haven’t thought about that before. Comes with the package, right? “And you think a bunch of books will help me figure that out?” you say. So far, you haven’t found anything worthwhile, but Rose knows more about locating obscure knowledge in seemingly useless books than you do.

“It remains to be seen.”

“Okay, that’s useless to me, though. Could you maybe be more specific? Use your third eye of luck or something?”

“It’s your relationship, not mine,” she says with a cocky little smirk. Maybe you were too quick to honk your own knowledge horn. Before you can press her for more information, however, she nods to the door. You turn to see Karkat step in the room and fold his arms. He doesn’t say anything, but he stares at you with an almost comical force of purpose that communicates exactly what he wants. Really, he’d probably be less obvious if he actually said something. You nod to Rose and meander over to him.

“’Sup?” you say.

“We need to talk,” he says. And all the flags raise.

“Like, bad talk, or…?”

He rolls his eyes like you’re an absolute dimwit, which maybe you are, but at least that means you’re wrong. He grabs onto your arm and steers you out the door. “For someone who claims to ‘know’ about moirallegience, you’d think you’d have realized by now that half of a healthy pale romance involves talking,” he says, and a metaphorical lightbulb clicks on in your brain.

“Oh, right. Got it. Let’s do this.”

You let him steer you down some halls, and you realize he’s taking you to your own room. To your pile. He wants to use the pile. You’re going to have a pile talk in the pile you made for the purpose of having pile talks. Nice. You flop down, and he gives you a disgruntled look like you just left the bathroom without washing your hands or some other minor social transgression. As if to educate you on your mishap, he shoves you out of the way with his foot when he lowers himself down and takes a moment to rearrange everything to his liking. You move stuff around for the aesthetic. Mostly to be ironic.

“So what’s on your mind?” you ask, lounging back as he finally settles in.

“What the fuck is going on?” he explodes, and you’re actually taken aback. He’s not even going to play coy with this. No preamble or anything. Straight into the ocean of shit, just diving right in. But that’s what you’re for, right? When things get tense, you help him let it out. So he’s letting it out.

“What happened?” you ask, hoping that something happened and that you haven’t been hells of unobservant and neglectful.

“I was on my way to the fucking load gaper–toilet, or whatever you assholes call it–and I saw Vriska hauling Tavros’s dead body down the hallway with Aradia’s music boxes in tow.”

“Oh, gross,” you say, breaking character for a moment to pull a face. “She kept his body? What the fuck.”

“Right? But fuck that for a moment and pay attention to the important details. The music boxes! She’s got irons in the fire that nobody knows about and I’ve had it up to my shameglobes with the slimy underhanded bullshit.”

“Well, shit. Should we ask Terezi about it? They’ve been talking, right?”

“Like that’ll get us anywhere. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer or even a half-hour’s conversation out of her since this whole bullshit trip through the void started.” You sense the note of bitterness in his voice, and you know that your job has only just started. Without giving yourself time to question yourself, you reach up and pap him gently on the face.

“I know,” you say. “Something’s up with that, and I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what. At this point, I don’t know if it’s worth caring about. That’s her deal.”

“Psh,” he says, but he relaxes slightly. Points for you. “Yeah, let’s not rehash that slurry of nonsense. But doesn’t it strike you as a little, I don’t know, disingenuous that the resident backstabbing schemer is running around making plans that nobody else knows about, and Terezi’s just lounging around, twiddling her thumbs like it’s all just fine and dandy?”

You shrug. “I don’t even know if Terezi’s in on it. If Vriska’s fucking around with dead bodies and other people’s aspects, that seems like something Terezi would be flagging.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you, but no! She’s not! She’s either in on it or completely uninterested in doing the one thing we need her to do more than anything else! And you know what, I don’t have the slightest fucking clue which it is. I don’t know anything anymore! Can you believe that I used to think I knew what was going on? Isn’t that a laugh! I seriously used to think that I had a pretty decent idea what each member of my reject conglomerate of a friend group were doing or planning at any point of time, and I really, seriously thought that I was doing my part to keep all their psychotic bullshit in check while pushing for the greater good. I don’t even fucking know what the greater good is anymore, let along what the hell everyone is doing! And now, looking back on everything that happened, it becomes clearer each passing second how much of a colossal, bulge-fondling idiot I was the whole time. Leader, my ass. The only leader I am is the leader of delusional fools.”

This…is what Rose meant by an episode, right? You’re getting some mad vulnerable vibes off of Karkat right now. It’s different than the usual rant, somehow, like he wants you to really take him seriously instead of writing off all his self-depreciating word vomit as an explosion of momentary frustration. But he’s still not quite there. He’s not saying, ‘Hey, look at my vulnerabilities, I feel shitty about these things.’ He’s still ranting, not divulging. You wonder if that’s because of you, or if he’ll ever be able to say these things with all the sincerity he must feel them. You don’t know if it matters. You wrap your arms around him and pull him to you, tucking his head beneath your chin so he can feel you hum.

“Hey, man,” you say softly, “anyone but you would’ve gone crazy trying to stay on top of these asshole’s bullshit. You’d need one hell of a surveillance system and the power to read minds to keep up with the schemes flying around paradox space anymore, and since the only person we know who can fuck around with other people’s minds is a huge part of the problem, it’s not even worth it. Don’t take it personally. At least we have the mayor now, right?”

You were hoping for a snort or a chuckle or at the very least a roll of the eyes, but Karkat stays were he is and takes a deep, heavy breath. You stroke his hair. You wonder what his face looks like right now, but you leave him be. Your imagination is enough. You shift to maximize your physical contact and shoosh gently against his head. 

“I’m impotent,” he finally says. “I can’t do a damn thing about anything.” And that’s it. He’s done. That’s all he says. And your heart thuds.

“Well, at least we’re impotent together,” you say. “And for what it’s worth, I think we all generally agree that you’re still the leader, even if Vriska is ruining everything always. Let’s be honest, the day we all decide she can be the bona fide leader is the day we really can’t give another collective shit as a group.”

“Pff,” he says into your chest, and you take that as a good sign. You let him relax into your touch and calm down. You don’t know if anything you said or did actually helped. When you told Rose you didn’t think you could get to the bottom of your shit ocean together without scuba gear, you were mostly joking, but now you’re not so sure. How deep do insecurities run? And do they heal? You can’t even answer that question about your own psyche, let alone Karkat’s. And are trolls different because they have the hormones related to moirallegience? Like…did you actually do something really important just now? Fuck. Looks like you’ll have to keep the books after all. And maybe borrow a few more.


End file.
